You are here

Educators Use EDC Toolkit to Create Research Agendas

The Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI) at EDC has released a report featuring a workshop process and toolkit that guides alliances of educators and researchers in working together to identify relevant research questions and agree on shared research agendas. The Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education, which funds the REL program, has begun publishing studies and tools that are the direct result of this workshop process. Collaborative research projects led by EDC in Providence, Rhode Island and Syracuse, New York are currently using the process to advance their goals to gather and use data to improve student outcomes.

In 2012, eight groups of educators across New England, New York, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands met with REL-NEI researchers and used the workshop process described in the new report to create long-term plans to address research gaps in several education priority areas. The report describes the highly collaborative process and includes lessons learned from the alliances that used the workshop materials—an agenda, a participant workbook, and a facilitator’s guide with references to an accompanying slide deck.

“This report is another example of EDC's leadership in working collaboratively with practitioners to create tools and materials to make better use of research and data,” says EDC’s Rebecca Carey, Deputy Director for REL-NEI.